40 Comments

Gezza

Aljaz midnight news reporting Russia says if the US fires any missiles at Syria they will respond.
&
Russia says it’s not to blame for the poisoning of the forrmer Russian spy: Sergey Lavrov says the British have refused Russia access to the claimed toxin used.

Gezza

Gezza

“Mr. Tillerson learned he had been fired on Tuesday morning when a top aide showed him a tweet from Mr. Trump announcing the change, according to a senior State Department official. But he had gotten an oblique warning of what was coming the previous Friday from the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, who called to tell him to cut short a trip to Africa and advised him “you may get a tweet.””

Gezza

Joe Bloggs

Secretary Tillerson is a true patriot that has severed our nation well. Thank you for serving. Mike Pompeo will be an outstanding Secretary of State – the Senate should act swiftly to confirm him https://t.co/J8Eo0harb9

Gezza

Joe Bloggs

sorry fella – didn’t mean to pre-empt that wonderful opportunity you have to be pilloried by the pillock.

Pompeo vs Tillerson? Which would you rather have: a bumbler who disagrees with trump from time to time, or a seemingly efficient brown-noser who agrees with him almost all of the time (other than on Russia)?

Tillerson was a moron but he did no great harm outside the doors of the State Department – at least he kept trump from blowing up the Iran deal. But fealty to trump is the only currency that matters… so that puts Pompeo in a more difficult position – violently anti-Russia yet beholding to trump.

As for Gina Haspel, she was centrally involved in the worst abuses of the CIA’s Bush-era torture regime. Haspel’s torture saved no one, and in an alternate universe where the Obama administration prosecuted the CIA’s Bush-era war crimes, she’d be in prison. Instead she’s going to be the head of the CIA – unless the Senate grows a set and blocks her.

MaureenW

Good strategic move by Trump – will help to shore up Deep State support for his administration rather than to Democrats. I hear he’s not a Clinton fan either so is well placed to move things along should they be pursuing Clinton inditements.

Joe Bloggs

When Putin calls, the Don has to act. Otherwise, he might be replaced by another caporegime. Tillerson said unequivocally that, in effect, Russia attempted to murder the Skripals – and acted recklessly with regard to the twenty odd other people exposed to the chemical weapon. Coming from America, that required more push back than Theresa May saying the same thing.

It would be interesting if this firing becomes another fact Mueller can use to support a charge of conspiracy to defraud the US, based on a pattern of trump acting in Russia’s interest rather than in America’s.

High Flying Duck

Joe Bloggs

Joe Bloggs

In the same week that Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels (which he said was paid from his home equity account), his presidential campaign received invoices from trump companies that added up to exactly $129,999.72

Federal election laws don’t allow campaigns to pay hush money to porn stars with whom the candidate has had a sexual relationship. These kinds of payments are not considered valid campaign expenditures – surprise, surprise.

A complaint has been made to both the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission, and members of Congress have also referred the case to the FBI for investigation.

Did trump’s lawyer arrange for trump’s company to pay trump’s campaign the money that was sent to Daniels? If so, there are going to be a whole host of new ethical and legal problems for trump, Cohen, and the trump organization.

MaureenW

Joe Bloggs

you may very well be right – if by the “right players” you mean compliant ass-kissers and old-news muckrakers who kowtow to trump.

However I suspect that despite all the conspiracies around Clinton, nothing of substance will ever be discovered that hasn’t already been raked over. Putin, the GOP, and the Murrikan Alt-Right have all been ruthlessly diligent in chasing her tail.

As for Ms Daniels, I don’t give a toss whether the two of them did the dirty – I’ve said that before. But federal crimes are different, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate.

Joe Bloggs

A top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee distanced himself from one of the panel’s most explosive findings in its Russia investigation — that the FBI, CIA and NSA overplayed their hand when they declared Russia preferred a Donald Trump victory in the 2016 election.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said Tuesday that the evidence gathered by the committee clearly showed Russia’s disdain for Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton and was “motivated in whole or in part by a desire to harm her candidacy or undermine her Presidency had she prevailed.”

A source familiar with Gowdy’s thinking said the congressman believes there’s no difference between opposing Clinton and backing Trump in what had become, effectively, a two-person race. The source added that Gowdy “disagrees with the conclusion” that the intelligence agencies got it wrong.

“He believes the debate over whether desiring a negative outcome for Clinton necessarily meant Russia had a preference for candidate Trump is a distinction that doesn’t make a difference,” the source said.

High Flying Duck

He’s obviously a bit slow isn’t he.
If Russia just wanted to hurt Hilary, it points to interference in the election without collusion – Trump was the irrelevant benefactor of an anti-Hilary campaign.
If Russia were actively promoting Trump as their preferred candidate over all others, that opens up the possibility of collusion in determining why they wanted Trump to win.

The distinction is extremely important.

Joe Bloggs

Gowdy is an experienced federal prosecutor, he knows where this is headed, and he wants to be a leader in the post-trump & Russia Republican party. He knows he needs to get off the blind partisan Fox News train before it goes over the cliff with the big criminal indictments.

Joe Bloggs

Question:
Why would Kushner have sent his digital guy to go meet with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak a month after the election, around the same time Russia was floating back channels so banks could bail out Kushner’s failing family real estate empire?